Slip-ring units are usually made up, inter alia, of two slip-ring elements, namely, a stator and a rotor. The stator may take the form of a slip-ring brush, whereas the rotor may have a series of contact rings. During operation, the slip-ring brush then has sliding contact with the lateral sides or surfaces of the rotating contact rings. Such slip-ring units are used in many technical fields for transmitting electrical signals or electric power from a stationary unit to a rotating electrical unit. To permit the production of slip-ring units having the smallest possible construction space or dimensions, there is a permanent desire for miniaturization of the relevant slip-ring elements.
In German Published Patent Application No. 1 926 219, among other things, a method is described for producing a slip-ring rotor, in which the contact rings are mounted side-by-side and placed in a support form embracing the contact rings. The interior of this stack of contact rings is thereupon filled with a casting or sealing compound. After the casting compound has hardened, this blank is then lathed on the entire lateral side until the individual contact rings are separated from each other.
A similar method is described in European Published Patent Application No. 0 618 648, where a centrifugal process is carried out to better distribute the casting compound. After the casting and hardening processes, the entire lateral side is machined here, as well.
Moreover, methods for manufacturing slip-ring elements are conventional in which contact rings and insulating plastic rings are mounted side-by-side in alternation. When working with a construction of this type, a great number of parting lines are formed which have a negative influence on the precision of the contact-ring pitch. In addition, especially for slip-ring elements having very small dimensions as are increasingly needed, these plastic rings, because they are small, are difficult and troublesome to manipulate, for example, using tweezers.
Thus, conventional methods for producing slip-ring elements have the disadvantage, inter alia, that they are comparatively complicated and time-consuming.
Therefore, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide a method for producing a slip-ring element which may involve a low manufacturing expenditure, and whereby qualitatively high-grade slip-ring elements may be produced.